New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
In normal places, the prosecutors charge people with a crime, and then they explain the elements of the crime, and then a jury decides if the prosecutors proved their case.
In New Jersey, those rules evidently don’t apply.
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Bridgegate — a weeks-long trial that does not include Chris Christie about whether Chris Christie abused his power — is finally in jury deliberations. And the jury, as usual, has some annoying questions. Yesterday, jurors asked if they could find Christie aide Bridget Anne Kelly and Port Authority official Bill Baroni guilty of a conspiracy to cause traffic on the George Washington Bridge without finding intent to punish Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich with bad trafic.
For those who haven’t been following Bridgegate: THIS IS THE WHOLE CASE. The whole reason why we’re here is because prosecutors allege that Kelly and Baroni caused a traffic jam on the GW Bridge TO PUNISH Sokolich for not supporting Christie’s reelection bid. Without retributive political intent, we’ve just got a regular weekday in New Jersey: two bumbling government officials who can’t figure out why traffic is so bad.
But, technically, a conspiracy charge does not require the alleged conspirators to know the motive behind the conspiracy. A jury could find that Kelly and Baroni agreed to break the rules, even if they didn’t know why they were breaking them.
To be clear: that would be a STUPID conclusion. You wouldn’t agree to make traffic problems for Fort Lee without knowing why. It’s like the jury saying, “Of course, we always beat the red-headed stepchildren, but not for any reason.”
Judge Susan Wigenton declined to tell the jury “don’t be freaking idiots,” and so she let them consider the case that way, over the strenuous objections from the defense.
That was yesterday. Today, the defense filed a motion to declare a mistrial. It’s not uncommon for defense lawyers to do this while the jury is still deliberating, but what’s weird here is that the defense’s motion is almost entirely redacted.
If the mistrial motion was based off of the defense’s disagreement with Judge Wigenton’s jury instructions, it likely wouldn’t have needed to be redacted so heavily. Also, it wouldn’t make much sense to ask the judge to order a mistrial over a thing the judge herself just said was okay.
This has led some to speculate that the mistrial motion has something to do with juror tampering or juror misconduct.
At a cosmic level, the best way for Bridgegate to end would be in a mistrial because eight of the jurors were actually androids controlled by Chris Christie from an Ex Machina lair in Trenton. And the defense attorneys only got wise because the self-tanner dispenser in the jury room was suspiciously full.
Judge Wigenton hasn’t ruled on the motion, as of this writing. Who in the hell knows what will happen next.
Defense Seeks Mistrial In Bridgegate Case; Judge Rules Instructions To Jury Will Stand [CBS Local]
Earlier: Bridget Anne Kelly Did Everything Right To Be Scapegoated For Bridgegate
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. Can you imagine what would be happening right now if Christie had won the GOP nomination?